So many big brands want Hatsune Miku in their ads. What do they see in her?

You never have to worry about her generating scandal — affairs, drugs, drunken streaking, tax evasion, plastic surgery. Hatsune (at least officially, so far) is a good kid you can count on.

A goddess walks by, tosses her long hair with confidence, and the boys' hearts flutter... You have probably been numb to shampoo ads built on this formula for years.

So what happens if you replace the lead with a virtual idol from the 2D world?

Lux, the Unilever brand, recently put "virtual idol" Hatsune Miku and the Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson in the same Japanese commercial, promoting its new Super Rich Shine Straight & Beauty haircare line.

The plot is simple. Hatsune Miku, who normally wears twin tails, catches sight of Scarlett on a street television, confidently selling shampoo, and copies her: she unties the twin tails and reappears with long, straight green hair down her back.

Then comes the blingbling transformation. The new Miku puts on a pink slip dress, performs on stage to warm applause, and finishes by receiving a video pep talk from Scarlett herself.

Like most shampoo ads, it cannot skip the closing formula: Miku strides like a princess in front of the Arc de Triomphe, her long hair in the care of Lux shampoo......

Apart from Miku, there is nothing new in it. Lux, which claims a major share of Japan's shampoo market, mostly wants her to lift its own profile another notch. The spot was released on her ninth birthday, August 31.

Anyone who follows anime or games already knows this virtual singer.

Hatsune Miku was born on August 31, 2007, released by Crypton Future Media, a Japanese voice-production and music-software company. The name means "the first sound from the future" in Japanese.

She is really a female-singer program built on a voice bank, and an easy one to use: type in a melody and lyrics and the software sings them back as a synthesized song. Users upload the results to Niconico or YouTube, where more than 100,000 user-made songs have piled up so far.

At the start the software had no character at all. Netizens said it looked like it was telling them "stay away unless you're a professional" — the packaging says it all......

To draw more users, the company then wrapped the voice in a "kawaii" idol: forever 16, sweet smile, cool scallion-green twin tails so long that fans on Zhihu have measured her bangs and her tails, usually in a miniskirt, not tall (158 cm) but long-legged. Japan is an anime country to begin with; the design looks built to otaku taste.

This singer needs no sleep and no meals, and her range is wide — 1980s oldies, pop songs, dance tracks, all of it. Her breakout number is the one fans describe as "you've heard it even if you don't know the name": Ievan Polkka, the leek-spinning song.

Crypton Future Media's real achievement was this: once the software had a face, a software business turned into a fan business. And the fans were everywhere.

In 2009 Miku began playing concerts in Japan as a "virtual singer," rear-projected onto a transparent panel so she could sing and dance for a crowd. Some fans in the front rows even said that the holographic setup occasionally let them catch her "pantsu" (the Japanese pronunciation of "pants," meaning underwear) as she danced.

At her first Tokyo concert, 2,500 tickets sold out the moment they went on sale, and another 30,000 people paid to watch the stream. The tour then went abroad: New York, Los Angeles, Singapore. Last year she played Shanghai, where every ticket for four straight nights was gone within eight minutes; some in the audience said more than half the hall was bespectacled otaku men. This December the show arrives in Beijing.

Why do the concerts sell? Not only because of the otaku and the besotted young men. Some female fans have also described the appeal: her music is unique, and no human could sing it; high-frequency music like this feels hypnotic, and it loops in your head.

Apart from the concerts, her bookings, her schedule and her daily routine look no different from a human star's.

She started getting invited onto television. Last October she appeared on the American talk show Late Show with David Letterman and sang "Sharing the World." She has her own accounts on Facebook, Weibo and Twitter, where she posts tour news and occasionally something more personal — an April Fools' joke, Valentine's greetings. When a fan @s her to say they love her, she reposts with a "thank you" and a cute face: ＼(^o^)／.

The packaging worked. By a 2011 count she had 390 million fans. It is the same on social platforms: more than 110,000 followers on Twitter, close to 400,000 on Sina Weibo, and over 2.52 million likes on Facebook.

Her birthday was a few days ago, and the comments under her Weibo posts and the danmaku on AcFun and Bilibili clips filled with soppy greetings: wife, the world's No. 1 princess, Your Highness, Miku-chan, goddess, "happy birthday, onee!"

The money followed.

In its first two years the software sold more than 50,000 copies, against a typical 200 to 300 for music software with no character attached. In 2014 its official Twitter account announced that total sales had passed 2.5 million copies. It is not cheap: at the official Taobao store, the Japanese edition costs 1,100 yuan and the English-Japanese bundle 1,300 yuan.

Signing a celebrity and selling to their fans is by now a standard move for brands; nothing else rounds up consumers so fast. Miku being a virtual singer has not kept her from endorsements, commercials or marketing campaigns. Brands keep coming, and the Lux spot is far from her first.

As early as December 2011 she was invited to front Google Chrome in Japan. Google ran a different campaign in each region at the time; at home in the US it picked Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, both then at their peak.

In Japan, Google's explanation was that Internet Explorer held more than 50% of the browser market there, far above other developed countries. Breaking in needed an opening, and the face had to be a singer young Japanese followed who also carried some weight worldwide. It settled on Hatsune Miku.

The one-minute spot used "Tell Your World," sung by Miku, and showed music lovers around the world making their own songs with the internet and the Miku software; Google products run through it, Chrome and Google Earth among them. The closing line, "Everyone, creator," argues that creators cannot do without the internet and, "more importantly," cannot do without Chrome.

The ad drew 580,000 views in four days, though people talked less about the film than about "Tell Your World." So the company released the digital album in 217 countries, making Miku the Japanese act with digital releases in the most countries ever. Five years on, the video has more than 14 million views on YouTube.

Carmakers were not content with human endorsers either, and saw what Miku could pull. In 2011 Toyota launched the 11th-generation Corolla in the US; to match the car, Miku dropped her usual look and sang her single "World Is Mine" with some swagger (fans nicknamed the song "the World's No. 1 Princess").

The choice was called "out of nowhere" at the time — a virtual idol, after all — and commentators said Japanese manufacturers seemed "a little too confident" about how many American otaku there were. But Toyota was mostly hitching a ride on the concert Miku was then preparing for Los Angeles. By one account, the presale tickets were gone within two weeks and 6,000 fans turned up.

BMW could not sit still after that. It shot no commercial, but it moved Miku onto the body of a Z4. To suit the racer's "beast" performance, she even had her hair permed into curls — a look some fans mocked as a female Transformer.

In China, Changan Automobile copied the idea and printed the virtual idol Luo Tianyi on a car body, though the livery looked crude enough to draw mockery from netizens.

Even the famously aloof luxury houses have wanted her.

In 2013 THE END, a stage piece starring Hatsune Miku, premiered in Tokyo. Louis Vuitton's spring-summer show was running at the same time, and Marc Jacobs's collection that season centered on checkerboard dresses. In Europe and the US, LV had already put the design on a string of actresses — Jessica Alba, Twilight star Kristen Stewart. In Asia it gave the new dress to Miku instead, altered to fit her small frame more closely.

Some fans objected to the checkered little dresses, calling the look cold and wrong for her. Others took a big label's sponsorship as "proof of how popular she is." Onlookers merely wondered whether a luxury brand had been put under a spell by the 2D world to make a choice like that......

LV has never said publicly why it made clothes for Hatsune Miku, but an interview Nicolas Ghesquière gave after taking over as its creative director in 2013 offers a clue. "This is no longer an age when making beautiful clothes is enough," he said. "Women have to feel confident wearing them, to have something with personality, something that shows they are equal to whatever they love doing."

From Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson and Madonna to Fan Bingbing, LV's ambassadors over the years have been chosen for confidence and independence as much as for looks and charm. By that measure Miku is close to flawless.

What matters more may be the taste of young people, especially in Asia. LV's 2014 results show Asia accounting for 36% of total sales, so the choice was very likely part of its Asia strategy.

Having found the 2D partnership sweet, LV went back for another virtual figure in its spring-summer 2016 campaign: Lightning, the character from Final Fantasy XIII. Ghesquière posted the images on his own Instagram account — Lightning in the new season's lace-trimmed clothes, an LV bag in hand. In two days they drew more than 3,000 likes. But some fans objected: "I think she should be in armor, holding a sword." "Why put her in these frilly dresses, and that bag — it doesn't suit her at all!"

Asked why Lightning was the season's fashion face, Nicolas gave a thin answer: "Reality and fantasy have become one, and Lightning is a true heroine."

He had hinted at the collaboration long before it was announced. He is himself an obsessive anime and game fan, with a weakness for heroines, the digital age and animation. In an interview with Vogue he said his designs draw heavily on games, anime and fantasy films — the game Minecraft, the science-fiction film Tron.

Back to Hatsune Miku. Most of her endorsements sit on smaller things her fans can actually buy.

Sony's headphones, for instance, built on the MDR-1A. A singer endorsing headphones surprises no one: fans need headphones to listen to music, so why not the limited edition painted with their idol? That is the reflex Sony was counting on.

The standard version had been on sale for a while at 1,399 yuan; the Miku edition cost 200 yuan more. Apart from the custom paint on the earcups, the two are technically identical. Sony sold it in China too — through its Tmall flagship store, its online store and its own retail shops — in a run of 1,000. Shortly after launch, both the Tmall store and Sony's online store showed it sold out, though you could still reserve one.

Then there is the tie-up with FamilyMart in Japan.

It started back in 2012 and covered a lot: snacks, treats, drinks, umbrellas and other goods carrying her face in the stores, plus a promotional film (more than 50,000 views on YouTube). The film has no new ideas in it: Miku works a shift in uniform, a boy walks in, she hums FamilyMart's entrance chime to greet him, and the boy turns into a besotted fan on the spot, a nosebleed away from collapse......

The company also "slyly" kept the NG outtakes from the "shoot" — a virtual singer cannot fluff a take — and played them as a bonus, on the grounds that a flustered Miku is "even more moe."

Taiwanese netizens then made their own version of the ad, with Miku humming the Chinese FamilyMart chime. Here she wears a modified uniform, cut into a deep V at the chest, which makes it sexier. It has done well on YouTube: over 110,000 views.

Others with a taste for parody put her behind the counter at 7-Eleven, with nearly the same script as the FamilyMart spot — the same smitten, head-over-heels look on the boy's face, the same blooper reel at the end.

In December 2014 Miku endorsed Rohto eye drops. Like the brands above, Rohto was riding a concert — the winter "Snow Miku" AR show — and issued a limited-edition box plus an app.

Install the app on an iPhone, iPad or another mobile device, point the camera at the front of the eye-drop box, and a ghost image of Miku's eyes appears on screen; line it up with the Miku printed on the box and she "runs out" to sing and dance, the background turning into an "AR stage."

Some fans said the "stage" transitions looked natural enough and that her image and movements were convincing; others noted that screenshots flatter it — up close you can still see the pixel blocks. The eye drops, 12 mL, cost 880 yen (about 58 yuan), which for a diehard fan is nothing.

Chinese companies have wanted a piece of her too, Baidu and Taobao among them. Baidu copied her onto its input method, which is hardly novel any more — any moderately cute 2D character ends up on some keyboard skin.

Taobao invited her to sing at its recent Maker Festival. She performed three songs: "Tell Your World," familiar to fans, and two new ones, including "Chaining Intention," heard in public for the first time. Her company had said beforehand that she was hard at work on her Chinese so she could greet her Chinese fans at the festival.

Taobao says it is moving "from buying to making", and the floor was full of VR, AR, drones, robots and other smart gear. A singer whose concerts run on rear projection and holograms fits that theme exactly.

Taobao also revealed that its user research shows more than 30% of users born in the 1990s, and 80% born in the 1980s or 1990s. So the festival's lineup leaned young — Hua Chenyu and Su Yunying, among others — plus Miku from the 2D side.

Jonathan Schenker, CEO of Bookmark Entertainment, a go-between that matches brands with talent agencies, told us that picking the right endorser is a complicated process. The research runs deep: the person's history and past activity, and from that whether their reputation matches the brand's values. A celebrity who can strengthen or repair the brand's current image is a strong candidate. Then comes the question of whether the endorsement will land with the target audience.

Brands also care about a few other things, and often analyze them, Jonathan added, going by his own experience: how the celebrity is doing on social media and online (how often the public searches their name, for instance), whether films, television shows or concerts are coming up, and which brands they have endorsed before.

By those standards Miku counts as a first-rate idol.

As one Zhihu user, @Jiang Jingbo, put it: "What we want is an idol who never spoils, but real idols spoil no matter what — skin sags, wrinkles arrive, they might smoke, they might vanish over a scandal."

For a brand, signing Hatsune Miku instead of a human idol is the safer bet, and far less trouble, because you never have to worry about her generating scandal — affairs, drugs, drunken streaking, tax evasion, plastic surgery; Hatsune (at least officially, so far) is a good kid you can count on.

She also has no past to dig up — her history is whatever the company and the users gave her — and she has a face that does not age and stamina that never runs out. She still plays at least one concert a year, and lip-syncing is out of the question. She is an approachable idol, too: a free path for amateur musicians who cannot afford studio time. A danmaku line on Bilibili summed up her FamilyMart work this way: she can wear a luxury label, and she can carry an ordinary uniform.

Endorsements like this may lack the human element, but Jonathan points out that a widely loved fictional character already has an emotional tie to consumers and to brands. On that reading, the ads should work about as well as any.

Miku's fees have never been made public, but counting licensing on all the merchandise, Kazuaki Ibe, an analyst at Japan's Nomura Research Institute, once calculated that spending tied to Hatsune Miku had already passed 10 billion yen (roughly 500 million yuan) — enough to make her the most successful virtual singer in history.

Cover image: still from the Lux ad

Banner image: enterdesk

Inline images: vccoo, yesky, Hexieshe, Weibo screenshots, pconline